Un dia mas en la Finca.

Tomorrow is our last day at the farm. We´re planning on going first to San Jose and then over to the coast to visit Tortuguero before starting work in Puerto Viejo on Monday. We´ve downloaded a few photos but are still having some issues posting them directly. Check our photostream on flickr. love and mangos.
Claire and Sam

An attempt at relaxation...

Saturday we set the alarm for 5 and by 6 we were walking down to Sarchi- we are some of the only tourists in Sarchi so certain people have started to recognize us and know to speak English to us. We have made one friend at the Soda next to the bus stop who told us he hasn´t had the chance to pracitice his english in a long time and Sam makes a point of walking by his shop every time we go into town.

From Sarchi we jumped onto the bus to Naranjo where we got off to wait for another bus to Ciudad Quesada (cheesy city?). We waited and waited and waited then asked some of the other people who were waiting only to be met with a frantic and rapid repsonse of somthing like "I don´t know, we´ve been waiting too you know?" After almost an hour and all the other buses passing at least twice, ours arrived. As we stood in line to get on we overheard someone say "habia un accidente cinco son muertos". There were no more seats left and without the fullunderstanding of what had happened we were a little on edge--talking to some other Americans (for a change) we found out that the bus they had been on in the morning had hit a car that had swerved out in front on it, all of the people in the car had died. We all felt very lucky to be safe and the other American students were really nice to talk to and even offered us their seats after a little while.

Once in La Fortuna we got some coffee from "Down to Earth Coffee" which was really fresh... suposedly harvested only days earlier. At the farm that we´re working on the coffee won´t be ready to harvest until October so although we are getting to know a lot about how to plant and maintain a coffee farm we can´t actually try any of the cosecha (harvest).

There are lots of little cafes and gringo oriented restaurants in La Fortuna and it was nice to grab a salad and sandwich. Still we were happy that our hotel was in El Castillo a little ways away from the main tourist spots. The hotel that we ended up at was a really great deal and we spent the rest of our afternoon relaxing in the pool, drinking lemonadas, and watching and waiting for the volcano to erupt. Funny thing is that all the hotels advertize doing relaxing things while watching lava. If the volcano had erupted while we were in the pool I think I would have tried to swim in the opposite direction as fast as possible. Luckily or not...we weren´t threatened by such excitment and the volcano slumbered away the day. We did get a chance to see the top though which was a stunning sight indeed.

Sunday we made our way back to Sarchi. The bus ride felt twice as long and we were very relievd to finallymake it back to our cabina. While we were gone they had fumagated so instead of live bugs flying around atnight we were met with lots of dead ones (and several zombies)...I guess watching the volcano was relaxing after all....

update 6/10

We´re back here in Sarchi, checking email and such.

Tried to upload some photos but had technical difficulties. Will try again soon.

This weekend we are headed to a volcano for a night. It will be nice to venture out to a new area after a hard week of work at the farm.

Today we raked the muck in the bottom of a drained lake for three hours... but were in paradise! right? who could complain

we´re looking forward to more adventures and are dreaming about the beach.

longer post to come this weekend.

Lunes es la dia de las hormigas

So we haven´t been here a week and we´ve already forgotton how to type in english. It doesn´t help that the spell check is turned on for spanish. ANYWAYS... here we are at the little internet building in sarchi...equipped with videogames and lots of schoolkids watching youtube...not so different from home. But on the farm where we´re staying its a pretty different picture. since we arrived on thursday of last week, we´ve worked four days out of five, doing various farm chores ranging from digging holes (huecas) to planting coffee bushes (plantas) to raking muck from the bottom of a drained lake (mal tiempo).

Monday was the day for las hormigas. We started the day by collecting hundreds of fallen mangos, knocked from their tree by sunday´s tropical storm. Suffice it to say that this added wetness was a boon for the bugs. Before bed sunday night, we were visited by dos cucarachas and muchos hormigas con alas (wings). so we woke up feeling itchy already. After collecting the muchos mangos, sam was instructed to climb in the back of a tractor and move about 15 palm trees in plastic bags. These baby trees weighed muchos and were swarming with translucent spiders and small red hormigas. These hormigas found new home in Sam´s shirt. They pique wherever they walk and are so small that they look like moving dust. Sam hates itchy red bumps.

Soon we were planting these palms along the side of a road. The digging for Sam is fun and meditative. However, he soon stepped on several casas de hormigas negras. These are black ants, which are easier to see but much more pernicious than their red amigos. They soon found their way up Sam´s leg and into his pants. Ants in Pants. Angel (our guia) said ¨take off pants" but in spanish. although sam has not been able to understand everything...this was an obvious instruction and he dropped his pants at once. After killing any ants he could see on his body he set out to avenge his pain. we spent the rest of our afternoon spraying our quaint cabina with bleach and insecticide. Claire was not feeling it. She had been instructed the day before to spread herbacide in the feild and and seen enough bugs die in a 24 hour period to feel at peace with the few that remained in the cabin. Needless to say...In about an hour, there was a mass exodus of flying ants from our sink. They wriggled and writhed their way across our floor and left this world lying on cold cement. RIP ANTS

but the cucarachas are still to be found...

Getting Ready to Go

Hi All--

Sam and I are still in NYC getting ready for our big trip. We just finished a tiring two-day Book Expo Extravaganza. We sold books, talked about books, looked at new books and met some lovely people at Lonely Planet where we got a Costa Rican Spanish phrasebook! It was really fun to spend some time with Ron and Colin and other Last Gaspers on this Coast before we head even further away...

We are taking off on the 3rd of June which is in less than a week! Our first stop will be the foundation for sustainable living , an organic coffee plantation in the mountains just North of San Jose. We don't know exactly what to expect but we are excited for the adventure! We will try to update the blog as frequently as possible...please leave us comments and email us whenever you wish!

Lots of love,
Claire and Sam